Confidence

[ygolo]

How do you gain confidence in your ability to do what needs to be done?

Whether it is self-care, meeting new people, accomplishing tasks on a job, doing well enough in school, or something else...

how do you gain the confidence in your ability to do it?

[philonightmare]

I gain confidence by giving myself mini peptalks about how I've dealt with such a situation before or something similar to it, if not worse, and so what's there to fear?

[Kiddo]

Experience. I look back on my life, and my past experiences provide me with all the ambition I ever need. No one can take your real life experience away from you and no amount of persuasion, manipulation, or lying will change how those experiences have affected you. The memories of your pain and joy should be all the assurance you need of choices you make in life.

As I do new things, I gain experiences, and I learn from those. Life is the only true cure for doubt.

[alcea rosea]

I am being myself.

[The_Liquid_Laser]

You have to give yourself the freedom to fail, and then give it all you've got. After that experience contributes a lot.

[Beat]

Successes give me confidence. Failures damage my self esteem.

[Athenian200]

Originally Posted by ygolo

How do you gain confidence in your ability to do what needs to be done?

Whether it is self-care, meeting new people, accomplishing tasks on a job, doing well enough in school, or something else...

how do you gain the confidence in your ability to do it?

Well, I'd suggest learning as much as you can about the process ahead of time first. And then if you can, try to find a way to "practice" and see where your skills in these things are, building them up to a good level. And then, just go out knowing that you are able to do it, and that it's just a matter of choosing to and focusing on getting it done.

[Edahn]

Stand up to the fear of fucking up, any way you can. Rationalize it, notice it, let go, whatever works. Just take the pressure off yourself of doing a perfect job. Patience, Danielsan.

[FDG]

By doing something more difficult than the task I want to be confident in. Obviously this is restricted to the domain of tasks that have an objectively defined difficulity and not to those that deal with very fuzzy elements of reality. As an example, the strategy works for both school related and sports related taks, but it does not necessarily work for love-related ones, also because in this case going through something more difficult might need more recovery time than an equiparable differential in, say, sports effort.

[ygolo]

I just realized that I relate to all the responses given.

Self-pep talks.

Experience.

Telling myself "I am who I am"

Feeling the fear and doing it anyway.

Learning as much about the process.

Practicing in harder situations.

Telling myself it's OK to fail.

But still taking a hit when I do.

I also do breathing exersices, pray, do something fun to feel better, take baby-steps, listen to music, or just vent to family. All of it helps a little.

Experience is definitely the most effective, however.

Time-pressure is my biggest confidence sinker. Given enough time, I tend to belive I can do anything. I used to say, "I never fail, I just run out of time."